|
BASHMAGH, Iraq -- Three days or so each week,
Sabriyah Tawfiq walks up the snow-covered mountain
near her home and crosses the border into Iran,
climbing down the other side to catch a taxi to the
nearest town. There, she sells the tea leaves, bars
of soap and bottles of shampoo she has smuggled
across in a cloth bundle.
Leaving her house at 7 a.m., when weather permits,
Tawfiq is usually back home in Iraq by 2 p.m., in
time for lunch with her children.
As the White House denies allegations that U.S.
spies are crossing into Iran from here to search for
nuclear sites, Tawfiq is proof that the border in
this rugged northern Kurdish region of Iraq is
plenty easy to navigate -- for those who know how.
Increased security
Iraqi guards here say they have increased security
at the Iranian border since the war, try to prevent
illegal crossings and know nothing about any
U.S.-run covert operations into Iran.
They do acknowledge, though, that relations with
Iranian border guards on the other side are poor.
And in a trip last week to the region, it was not
hard to find smugglers and ordinary Iraqi and
Iranian Kurds with relatives on both sides who cross
regularly here without visas or passports.
"That's the only thing I know how to do, to bring
money to the family," said Tawfiq, a 40-year-old
widow whose youngest child is 10.
Tawfiq has been caught six times since she became a
smuggler two years ago. Security has improved
somewhat, she knows from firsthand experience:
Before, the Iranian guards accepted bribes when she
was caught.
Now, they confiscate her goods -- which she usually
sells in Iran for about $6 -- and make her pay a
penalty.
Other smugglers carry cigarettes or alcohol, which
is forbidden in Iran, or electronic goods and
machinery parts. Those coming from Iran bring fruits
and vegetables to sell in the Iraqi town of Panjwayn.
Alleged U.S. missions
According to an article published last month in The
New Yorker magazine, U.S. officials have been
sending covert reconnaissance missions into Iran
from here since last summer to identify possible
future military targets inside Iran.
White House officials called the report by Pulitzer
Prize winning writer Seymour Hersh inaccurate.
Pentagon officials said the article was filled with
mistakes but did not deny its basic point.
U.S. military forces based in the Iraqi town of
Panjwayn visit the seven Iraqi border posts in this
area about three times a week to check cross-border
movements and make sure there are no infiltrators
from Iran, said Lt. Saber Rashid Saleh, commander of
the Iraqi border police in the Bashmagh area.
"We can only tell you what we can see with our own
eyes," Saleh said. "And we have not seen them cross
into Iran. ... If the Americans come to our area,
the area commander in charge of this post travels
with them on their surveillance. So if they go into
Iran, it's not from our post."
Saleh said he had not received instructions from
high officials in the Kurdish government to
facilitate any covert U.S. crossings into Iran.
His deputy, Noshirwan Mohammed Amin, said that when
the U.S. military comes here, the soldiers focus 75
percent of their time on checking border posts,
including buildings and other facilities.
"We don't know what the other 25 percent of their
work is," he said.
When U.S. troops first arrived here after the
invasion, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, a
paramilitary force that controls Iran's border
regions, were apprehensive, Saleh said. So he and
his men went over to reassure the Iranians there was
no cause for concern.
"But they said as long as we were with the
Americans, they would refuse to talk to us," he
said. "So we and the Iranians have no contact. We
don't have good relations."
Only Iranian Kurds are allowed to legally cross
into Iraqi Kurdistan at this border point.
Border guards say about 50 of them enter Iraq every
day. Other Iranian ethnic groups normally must cross
from border posts farther south.
To go legally into Iran from here, a traveler must
cross the narrow Nawkalan River and walk or drive
about 50 yards before reaching the border post that
displays pictures of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini, the father of the Islamic Revolution, and
his successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The Iraqi border guards do stop illegal crossings.
Last month, they arrested three Afghans carrying
fake Iranian papers and trying to enter Iraq, Saleh
said.
"Most infiltrations take place at night. So we have
to be very vigilant. We worry about all Iraq, not
just explosions taking place in Kurdistan," Saleh
said.
Saleh believes the establishment of the Iraqi border
police a year ago also reduced the flow of Iranian
extremists into Iraq that started immediately after
Saddam Hussein's ouster in 2003.
Plans are in place to add 10 more border posts in
this area and increase the number of Iraqi border
police from the current 400 to 700.
Yet to most Kurds venturing between Iraq and Iran
here, the region remains simply "Kurdistan," all one
country with a similar landscape, language, culture
and music, with many marriages between Kurds on the
two sides.
As a reporter watched recently, a man emerged from
the mists on the Iranian side of the border here. He
wore baggy Kurdish pants and carried a plastic bag.
After a body search -- but no showing of passport --
he continued walking into Iraq.
http://www.theolympian.com
Top |
® 